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Having a Billion Dollar Company at 21

Having a Billion Dollar Company at 21

Christopher Webster
February 20, 2025

Startups:

Group of 21 year olds secure $100M:

Do you remember what you were doing when you were 21? Probably celebrating something at a bar or trying to figure out what your gonna do with your life. Well three 21 year olds decided that they were going to start an AI recruiting startup, which is definitely the right choice. The three created Mercor and just raised a $100 million Series B. This round values their company at $2 billion. They are some of the youngest founders of a billion dollar company. The three founders are actually Thiel Fellows, which just means they dropped out of college and got money from billionaire investor Peter Thiel to start any company they wanted. What should we expect next from such young founders?

Warships:

Another Austin-based defense startup is raising money. This time it is Saronic, which is raising a $600 million Series C. They are using the money to build an autonomous ship factory called “Port Alpha”. This also skyrockets their valuation to $4 billion. The round was led by Elad Gil with participation from General Catalyst, a16z, 8VC, and others. This would make Saronic the second or third most valuable defense tech startup in the U.S. It is still going to be some years before we see unmanned ships patrolling the waters for our military, but just thinking about it is exciting. Who many more defense tech startups will we see raise this year?

AI coding:

The AI coding industry has been very active these past couple of years. Last month Cursors parent company Anysphere was valued at $2.5 billion and now competitor, Codeium, is being valued a $2.85 billion. They are looking to raise more money, but we do not know yet how much. They raised a $150 million Series C six months ago and were then valued at $1.25 billion. How much are these AI coding companies going to raise and who is going to come out on top?

Big Tech:

What’s today’s Elon Musk news?:

Elon Musk is talks to raise more money for his company X. While we don’t yet now how much he is looking to raise we know that he and the investors are valuing the company at $44 billion. While nothing is set in stone and there is still a chance that the raise will not even happen it is good news for Elon’s X if he is able to raise at a $44 billion valuation. This is the exact price that Elon bought Twitter for. People have doubted that he would ever be able to get Twitter to the same valuation that he bought it for. This could be his time to silence his haters. Do you think it was worth it for Musk to buy Twitter?